Product Description

From lists of fundamental start-up equipment to advice on charting income and expenses, this book guides small farmers through feeding, sheltering, and breeding cows, pigs, goats, rabbits, ducks, and chickens. Breeders and farmers learn the full scope of husbandry and care, including which records should be maintained -- health records, breeding journals, milk sheets, and family trees -- to which ointments, sprays, and syringes should be kept in the animal first aid box. Included are farrowing charts and pregnancy diaries that detail each step of gestation. Extensive details and instructions are provided on castration, giving iron, docking tails, and caring for newborns. Farmers' accounts, photos, a glossary of terminology, and a list of resources offer support to experienced and novice farmers alike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #962969 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

From Library Journal
These two new books are targeted at anyone with a couple of acres (and even city dwellers where ordinances permit) who would like to raise a few farm animals for meat, milk, eggs, or simply enjoyment. Both volumes are intended for beginners and are written by nonexperts who nonetheless can offer a great deal of practical information and advice based on their own experiences. Peck-Whiting and her family have dabbled in raising chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, pigs, and cows on their country homestead in the mountains of northern Washington. In Farm Animals, she devotes at least a chapter or two to each of these species while saving the most space for pigs. (She previously wrote Pigs and Other Stories.) The author crams her book with personal anecdotes, enthusiastically sharing the successes and failures of her ventures in a casual, down-to-earth style. While Farm Animals gives readers a relatively quick survey of a variety of livestock and poultry and is best employed as supplemental reading material, Living with Chickens focuses entirely on one species and stands on its own as an excellent introduction to chicken basics for newcomers. Rossier draws heavily on his own experiences raising fowl in Vermont and fits in additional chicken facts as he gives detailed "how-to" advice on housing, hatching, buying, feeding, and butchering. He even includes a chapter on children and chickens. Photographer Hansen (My Life as a Dog) ably captures the essence of chickens at home in various barnyards and other Vermont locations. Both titles are recommended for public libraries. (Index of Living with Chickens not seen.) William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Jeanie Peck-Whiting has been raising pigs, cows, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys on a 40-acre ranch with her family in Tonasket, Washington for the past seven years.

Jeanie also wrote: Pigs and other Stories which explains how she and her family came from the city and adjusted to the new groove of life on the small farm.

Jeanie now is the editor and owner of a quarterly called On-The-Farm newsletter which is designed to keep small-farmers across America united. Highly recommended.